Tina the Subaru has new rear brakes, the house is clean from stem to stern (if one assumes that the basement, in this metaphor, is the grimy harbor water), the giant Portuguese novel I've been editing is off my desk, and the college boy is coming home today.

This morning I'll be wrapping presents. This afternoon I'll be at a reception at Space Gallery for the poets in Balancing Act 2: An Anthology of 50 Maine Women Poets. This evening I'll be buying bluefish and brussels sprouts for dinner.

For now, I'm drinking black coffee in the dark, reading about Beethoven in The Birth of the Modern, listening to the furnace grind out hot air, and imagining writing poems again.